Black voters drift from Democrats, imperilling Harris bid, poll shows

Vice President Kamala Harris has improved her party’s standing among black voters since President Joe Biden left the election race, but she still significantly trails Biden’s 2020 share of that vital Democratic constituency, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll.

Nearly eight in 10 black voters nationwide said they would vote for Harris, the poll found – a marked increase from the 74 per cent of black voters who said they would support Biden before he dropped out of the presidential race in July. But Biden won 90 per cent of black voters to capture the White House by narrow margins in 2020, and the drop-off for Harris, if it holds, is large enough to imperil her chances of winning key battleground states.

Former president Barack Obama speaks during a campaign rally.Credit: AP

Democrats have been banking on a tidal wave of support from black voters, drawn by the chance to elect the first black female president and by revulsion towards former president Donald Trump, whose questioning of Harris’ racial identity, comments on “black jobs”, and demonising Haitian immigrants have pushed his long history of racist attacks to the forefront of the campaign.

Harris is no doubt on track to win an overwhelming majority of black voters, but Trump appears to be chipping away broadly at a long-standing Democratic advantage. His campaign has relied on targeted advertising and sporadic outreach events to court African-American voters – especially black men – and has seen an uptick in support. About 15 per cent of black likely voters said they planned to vote for the former president, according to the new poll, a six-point increase from four years ago.

Much of the erosion in support for Harris is driven by a growing belief that Democrats, who have long celebrated black voters as the “backbone” of their party, have failed to deliver on promises, the poll showed. Some 40 per cent of African-American voters younger than 30 said the Republican Party was more likely to follow through on its campaign commitments than Democrats were.

“They sweep table scraps off the table like we’re a trained dog and say, ‘This is for you’,” LaPage Drake, 63, of Cedar Hill, Texas (near Dallas), said of the Democratic Party. “And we clap like trained seals.”

Drake, who owns a tree-removal service, said he would back Trump.

“Regardless of how people call him racist and stuff, he is for the country of America,” Drake said.

The vice president’s support from black women is strong — about 83 per cent — while 12 per cent of black women said they would back Trump, with 5 per cent undecided. But the slip from Biden’s 2020 numbers among black men is striking – 70 per cent said they would vote for Harris in November, down from 85 per cent in 2020. This is in line with the gender gap more broadly, but relatively new among black voters.

Still, despite Trump’s continuing efforts to convince African-American voters that they were better off during his presidency, more black voters now, than in February, say the policies of the Biden-Harris administration have helped them. Substantially fewer now say that Trump’s policies helped them.

Support for Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris among black men has fallen.Credit: AP

In Pittsburgh on Thursday night, former president Barack Obama appealed directly to black men who might be on the fence about supporting Harris, suggesting that many “just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president” and reminded them that the “women in our lives have been getting our backs this entire time”.

Allies of Harris point to her work as vice president to lower black unemployment, stabilise healthcare costs and increase funding for historically black colleges and universities as examples of a concerted and measurable effort to deliver for black communities. In recent interviews, Harris has said that she knows it is not a foregone conclusion that African-American voters will flock to her campaign.

In an effort to reach these voters, Harris’ campaign has started a tour of historically black colleges and universities, and will begin a push to engage black faith voters in battleground states over the weekend. Harris has also sought to engage black men through surrogate events and non-traditional media interviews, including a recent appearance on the podcast, All the Smoke, hosted by former professional basketball players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson.

The vice president was scheduled to attend a town-hall-style event in Detroit on Tuesday hosted by the morning radio program The Breakfast Club, one of the show’s hosts, Charlamagne Tha God, said on Friday. The nationally syndicated show is popular with black Millennials.

African-American voters have a far more favourable view of Harris personally than of Trump: 75 per cent said Harris would do a better job handling the issues important to them personally. Only 17 per cent said Trump would.

“She’s more capable of doing the job than he is, I feel,” said William Cox, 47, a truck driver in Greensboro, North Carolina. “She stands more for what betters my family.”

But on specific issues, black voters were divided. The poll found that 56 per cent said the United States should pay less attention to problems overseas and concentrate on problems at home, a position more reflective of Trump’s views than Harris’. About 40 per cent of black voters favour Trump’s border wall, and 41 per cent support deporting illegal immigrants, something Trump has said he would do en masse. That is fewer than the 52 per cent who oppose that proposal but still a substantial piece of the black electorate.

Trump, closing out his campaign with increasingly nativist rhetoric and scare tactics, frequently invokes a false picture of crime running rampant in the nation’s cities, driven by immigrants in the country illegally. In fact, violent crime in US cities has fallen.

Attendees hold signs as former president Barack Obama speaks during a campaign rally supporting Kamala Harris.Credit: AP

But 47 per cent of African-American voters, a plurality, said crime in big cities had gotten out of control, seemingly siding with Trump’s portrayals. And 42 per cent agreed with a more moderate phrasing of the issue: crime is a major problem in big cities, but it is not out of control.

Still, Harris’ problems with African-American voters rest on the same issue that her struggles with other constituencies do: the economy. Nearly three-quarters of black voters rated the economy fair or poor, and the economy along with abortion were rated their most pressing concerns. More than seven in 10 black voters said they had cut back on groceries because of cost; 56 per cent said they had cut back often.

Some 78 per cent of black voters said race still posed significant obstacles to getting ahead, and of that figure, 21 per cent said the Democratic Party had no solutions to address the obstacles.

What could help Harris, however, is her party’s still-enduring reputation for aiding low-income people of colour, which persists among a broad swath of black voters.

“Things do get better when we have Democratic presidents,” said Queneshia Baldwin, 34, a home health employee in Norwood, North Carolina, who added that she would vote for Harris. “I think it’s more so the problem is with Republicans.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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